President's Letter: ISCA Makes an Impact

Serving as your ISCA president this school year has been an honor. You are fortunate to be a school counselor in Illinois because you are a member of a strong and vibrant school counseling association. Your ISCA board has been hard at work putting together a variety of professional conferences and advocating for Illinois school counselors. In July, the ISCA Board met with Sarah-Jane Lorenzo from the National Association of State Boards of Education. She is currently working on a report for state board members that will promote positive strategies they can employ to assist school counselors. During the meeting, we shared our recommendations for states to increase buy-in to employ school counselors. We were able to address issues unique to rural, urban and suburban school counselors.

We are also working closely with Dakota Beavers who serves as the principal consultant for college and career readiness at the Illinois State Board of Education. In the brief time Dakota has been in her role, she has already celebrated the 15 Illinois RAMP schools for 2017 (third most in the United States) via a press release from the Illinois State Superintendent, set goals to advocate for comprehensive counseling in all Illinois schools and created the opportunity for ISCA leadership to present to the Illinois State Board of Education in October.

Due to the leadership of Whitney Triplett, ISCA Region VII representative, a group of school counselors have spent the past two years revising and updating the Illinois Developmental Counseling model. The work of this committee is truly remarkable. The new model aligns with best practice comprehensive counseling models, contains core curriculum examples, and dozens of hyperlinks to resources for school counselors. The plan is to release the final version at the ISCA State Conferences next April. School counselors who engage with this model will find a variety of tools to assist in creating and improving comprehensive school counseling programs across Illinois.

ISCA is also hosting a variety of professional development events this school year. In October, we are offering suicide prevention workshops both in upstate and downstate locations. Check out the ISCA website for registration information. In February, ISCA will host a workshop to help school counselors prepare for interviews related to securing a school counseling position. Nicolette Karl, our ISCA graduate student VP, is leading this helpful initiative. ISCA will also host workshops on ethics for school counseling in both downstate and upstate locations. Leslie Goines, ISCA president-elect, is already planning two excellent state conferences. At the upstate conference, ASCA School Counselor of the Year Terri Tchorzynski will give the keynote address.

Our ISCA membership is close to eclipsing 1,000 members for the first time! Now is a great time to engage with your state counseling organization. Please contact any ISCA board member to become involved or to share great ideas to further improve our already wonderful school counseling association.

Contact Vince Walsh-Rock, ISCA president, at vwalsh-rock@csd99.org.